Thanksgiving "weekend'....well, it is only a holiday in the US. Just a regular Thursday here. The weather, while still warmish, is getting chillier and wetter, sometimes dipping into the 30s at night, usually in the 50s by day.
I made breaded chicken cutlets, gravy, mashed potatoes and baked carrots with an asiago cream sauce. And we had cornetti (croissants). There's enough potato and gravy left for potato pancakes at another meal.
We opened a bottle of Prosecco. However, I had to keep steering the conversation, such as it was, away from the events of the morning.
Two years ago.....yes, two years ago.....a leak was noticed in a cantina downstairs and also a small rivulet leaking outside the building. We do not have any cantina space in this building, but, since we live here, we chipped in our fair share to repair the leak. We have homeowners insurance, which made a sizeable payment for the repair. The leak, itself, was confined (other than the outside part) to the cantina of a certain real estate agent in town who owns the apartment upstairs.
As a result of the repair, we learned that the majority of said leak was coming from the small apartment next door to us. Two years ago, the old lady who lived upstairs moved to the apartment downstairs since she was having trouble dealing with the stairs. As I said, it was TWO YEARS AGO that the problem started. Previously, there was no leak.
The apartment next door is owned by a woman who wanted to sell it at an exhorbitant price. She eventually rented to the old lady. Someone, we don't know who, sort of "takes care" of this old lady, who really should not be living alone, but what do I know? Anyway, a cleaning lady comes in TWICE a week....twice a WEEK!...and thoroughly swabs down the deck, so to speak. Water, water everywhere. Why on earth this has to be done twice a week is beyond me....who gets THAT dirty? It isn't a hospital. So, between leaky pipes and twice weekly mini-floods....yeah, there's trouble in the cantina.
Our pipes are not leaking. Our pipes are not the problem. And, in spite of this, we paid our share for the repairs.
One day we got a lovely little letter in the mail from an attorney for the owner of the cantina that owns the apartment upstairs. It claimed the problem persisted and they wanted more money. An amount was not specified but they wanted the money NOW.
Well, after remarking on the blatant unprofessionalism of the letter.....you want payment now? How much? For what? We already paid...why come after us? Bottom line: we had to hire our own attorney. Oh, joy.
So, it turns out that both the real estate guy (who owns the upstairs apartment and the cantina) and the woman who owns the place next door have no homeowners insurance. What he is trying to do is squeeze money out of the owner of the place next door (she refused to pay, even though her pipes were at fault) and out of us...because, well, Americans, I guess. We must be loaded.
We have had several people stomp through our place a couple of times already...look around, look under the sink....look at the balcony. Ok....nice to see you, bye.
Well, happy holiday, they showed up (surprise!!) yesterday morning. Couple of men, couple of women, in and out, in and out, leaving the damned door wide open. "Chiusa la porta, PER FAVORE!!!" I didn't want a scared cat bolting out the door.
There was someone downstairs in the cantina. They had a drill. They were using the drill. They used the drill to drill right through the ceiling downstairs into our kitchen and right through a kitchen tile in front of our sink and dishwasher. What the actual HELL???
My husband was livid. LIVID! Expletives flying all over the place. I was livid, too....and watching the door and checking on cats...omigod.
One of the men...I really don't know who is who....said, in English, "We will fix this." Well, goody...you bet...we do not have an extra tile. So now the search is on for a tile that will match as closely as possible the ones we have throughout the house, other than in the living room. We have no idea how old the tiles are (they are not old old....not historical or anything, but finding a good match will be a challenge)
So....here we are, with an absolutely ridiculous and unnecessary HOLE in our floor that we have covered with tape so nothing decides to crawl in, and no frigid blasts of cold air.....isn't it lovely?
So, we got through Thanksgiving, such as it is nowadays...hoping to find one single freaking floor tile to sort of match. Will they actually pay? Hahahahahahahahahahahaha.......
